


better the devil you know

by jesterwrites



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, I luv him, Spoilers for the end of S1, also the oc isn't a self insert or anything so dont let that scare you off either, doesn't conform to s2/3 canon, not a ton of michaeleanor, pretty michael-centric, takes place during the reboots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-07-30 01:18:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16276211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesterwrites/pseuds/jesterwrites
Summary: "Things are going well so far - which is to say, nothing has gone horribly wrong."Excerpts from the records of Neighborhood 12358W, reboots #001, #327, and #556.





	better the devil you know

**Author's Note:**

> hey whats up i'm back!
> 
> started watching tgp a few weeks ago and now i'm obsessed, whoops.
> 
> finding time to write has been tough, and between college applications and senior year and all that i'm pretty burned out already LMAO but here's this thing! 
> 
> its a little abstract and all over the place compared to what i typically write but i'm proud of it anyway 
> 
> enjoy!

#001.

 

It always starts the same way. A flutter of eyelashes, pupils dilating like a newborn’s, a sudden rush of breath pushed in with all the gentility of an iron lung. Sometimes, Michael can practically feel it, that first desperate breath, the confusion of the exhale nearly palpable in the air. Were he driven by baser instincts, he thinks, he’d stick his tongue out to taste it when it comes.  _ Patience, Architect. There are better things to spend time salivating over _ . Not that his real body has anything resembling taste buds. He seems to be picking up these human colloquialisms more and more. How cute.

 

It always starts the same way. Eleanor opens her eyes. 

 

It all always comes back to her. Eleanor. 

Eleanor.

 

Patience.

 

\------

 

#000.

 

Persephone infuriates him. She’s not much higher in the ranks than he is, but the amount of power in her small frame is still enough to decimate a million stars without breaking a sweat, so Michael consistently finds it in his best interests to do what she wants. Most of the time, she oversees her own subset of torture circles, like the places where politicians have their teeth harvested one by one and where most of the volcanic rock enemas take place. When she isn’t doing that, though, Michael estimates she spends her downtime coming up with new ways to annoy him. 

 

“What do you think about the Foo Fighters?” Her human body is small, and youthful. If she’d been a real human, Michael wouldn’t have pegged her as a day over twenty. She curls that body against the velvet chaise in her office and doesn’t even look at him, twirling a lock of bronze-colored hair around her finger. 

 

“Excuse me?” He’d come here at her request, expecting to be insulted, or seduced, or a mixture of the two. She rolls her eyes, petulantly, but doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t like to repeat herself. Michael sighs. 

 

“I don’t think about them. Or any human bands. Why?”

 

She stretches out, her tight black sweater riding up to reveal an expanse of skin the color of milk, and nearly pouts. 

 

“There’s been talk of who’s getting them once they get here. I could put in a good word for you, if you like.” Her golden eyes glitter. “Anything for my favorite.” 

 

He isn’t her favorite, at least he doesn’t think so. He suspects, in fact, that she enjoys his outbursts of anger more than the half-hearted affection he sometimes remembers to dispense when she’s with him. 

 

“I’ll pass.” He wonders idly if this insolence will put her in a worse mood, or a better one. Meetings with the little diva usually ended with screaming, fucking, or both. Usually both, but who could tell? Immortal girls were flighty- maybe even more so than human ones. 

 

His mind wanders back to his new pet project, his little human psyche experiment. It excites him to think of humans at each other’s throats like fighting dogs, and the thrill of it all distracts him enough that he doesn’t even balk when Persephone beckons him close for a kiss.

 

\------

 

#556.

 

He plays the game. He doesn’t have a choice. He greets each human with sickening tenderness, holds their fragile hands and shows them around the way he always does. Their eyes widen with delight- with the exception of Eleanor, who tends to look more and more like a cornered animal the longer the charade goes on. If the reboot lasts long enough, he muses, she’ll be the first to snap - that is, if she doesn’t catch on first. 

Eleanor is, to her credit, the smartest dirtbag human Michael has ever met. Perhaps not as knowledgeable as Chidi, but quicker to jump to conclusions than Tahani. (There is Jason, of course, but Michael has met rocks smarter than Jason.)  For the past five-and-a-half hundred reboots, Eleanor has proven to be the glitch in Michael’s otherwise perfect machine. He is realizing, with an uncharacteristic sense of impending disaster, that it no longer matters who her soulmate is, if the restaurants sell only froyo or fish sticks or various overcooked meats, if she confesses now or later. It begins and ends the same way.

 

A blink. A rush of air.

 

A sigh. A snapping of fingers. 

 

“This time,” he mutters absently into the tape recorder. “This time we’ll get it right.”

 

Things are going well so far - which is to say, nothing has gone horribly wrong.

 

\------

 

#327.

 

Eleanor knows. 

 

Eleanor has known from the day after she arrived that this was definitely not the Good Place. She’s known from the first moment she was truly alone, after her supposed soulmate (some rando named… what, Peter? Patrick?) had disappeared into the rest of the candy-colored, too-pretty neighborhood to do whatever hot dumb perfect people do in their free time. She’d sat down on the couch- which was just a little too squishy to be comfortable- and realized: this is hell. Maybe it was heaven for some people, but the longer she spent in this irritatingly perfect heaven-town with its stupidly beautiful inhabitants and stupidly chirping birds and cloudless blue sky, she was going to be in hell. Even the sunshine sucked. It was warm and pretty and all that, but it wasn’t, like, warm enough to get a decent tan. 

 

“I can’t even say fork,” she complains quietly. “Fork.  _ Fork. _ I hate this.”

 

Eleanor rubs her eyes. She hadn’t even done any of the stuff Michael had said she’d done to get up here. She’s going to have to keep that a secret. While she’s at it, it would probably be a bad idea to tell anyone- especially Michael- that the endless stream of perfect people with perfect lives and perfect forking moral standing was really starting to get on her nerves. 

 

Keeping secrets was practically second nature to her on earth. This was going to be easy as pie. Right? 

 

\------

 

#556.

 

When they tell him they want to leave, he lets them. This surprises them, because Eleanor has already turned up in his office with fire in her eyes, spitting, “ _ This is the Bad Place, you sick fork, isn’t it _ ?”

 

She wouldn’t tell him how she figured it out. That meant it had something to do with Chidi. Jason and Tahani were nowhere to be seen. That didn’t matter, though.

 

He tries a new approach this time. They might know the truth, but that didn’t mean they had to know  _ all  _ the truth. He wants to toy with them a little longer, to reward himself for his patience.

 

“Just because you don’t belong in the Good Place doesn’t mean you can’t leave,” he says, lying through his teeth. “There’s rumors of a middle ground, a sort of... Medium Place.” Eleanor’s eyes light up and Michael holds back an amused chuckle.  “You really think your being here is a mistake? Try your luck. If you belong there, it’ll let you in.”

They believed him. Strange, considering they’d just caught him lying about being in the Good Place, but humans were finicky and, in his opinion, far too trusting. 

 

So there they all were, in front of the train station. Eleanor’s eyes were stormy and she wouldn’t look Chidi in the eye, but they stood protectively close to each other, shoulders almost brushing.

 

“This neighborhood, like all real Good Place neighborhoods, is equipped with its own security system. It’s a closed area, meaning it was designed to prevent anyone who doesn’t belong here from coming in, and also to prevent anyone from leaving.” It’s a new lie, one he hasn’t told before. This project is really pushing the limits of his creativity, and that’s saying something. 

 

“In order to leave, you both will have to pass a small test. It’s meant to ensure nobody leaves by accident. There’s never been an incident of anyone leaving a Good Place voluntarily before, but… there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

 

“This doesn’t count,” Eleanor snarks. “Since, you know, you’re a demon and a liar.”

 

Chidi looks like he wants to say something, but doesn’t say a word. Michael ignores Eleanor and turns to the other man instead. 

 

“The test is easy,” he tells them. “I have a good feeling about this.”

 

Chidi and Eleanor are watching him almost obediently as he puts on his best conman smile and gestures to the train waiting in the station. The neighborhood is quiet, almost unnaturally still; if the two humans hadn’t been as focused on his words perhaps they’d’ve questioned it. 

 

“I’m going to ask you-” here he gestures to Eleanor- “a very simple question: whether you want to leave with Chidi, or stay here.”

 

“You don’t need to ask,” says Eleanor, confused, as Chidi says, “You know the answer to that already.” Michael cuts them off with a wave of his hand. 

 

“The neighborhood won’t let you leave unless it’s what you really want. You have to make the choice independently, without him there. It’s really just semantics-”

 

“Whatever.” Eleanor cuts him off. “Get this nerd on the train and let me tell you how much I want to get my ash out of here, and we’ll burn rubber.”

 

Michael resists the urge to wag a finger at her like a parent scolding a child. Instead, he turns from her to Chidi, who looks about as impatient as a mild-mannered dork like him could possibly be.

 

“That’s just Eleanor’s test. You don’t get off scot-free either.”

 

The human sighs like he knew this was coming. “You’re going to force me to make some arbitrary decision knowing that my natural inability to do so will prevent us both from leaving.” 

 

He’s already flustered. This is going to be so easy.

 

“No,” Michael says, feigning offense. “You really think I’d- never mind, I would. But that’s neither here nor there. Your test is easy.”

 

He gestures Chidi towards the train. 

 

“Go ahead. This is going to be a piece of cake.”

 

\------

 

#327.

 

“I’m sorry, Eleanor,” Chidi begins, but Eleanor cuts him off. 

 

“Never mind. I’m fine. That was a stupid thing to say. Forget it.”

 

She’s already picking up her books and her jacket, movements fast and unsteady, like she’s eager to get away from the “I love you” hanging between them that neither of them wanted, but there it was, because she’d said it. And then everything went wrong, because Chidi didn’t say it back because Chidi doesn’t love her. If she didn’t know this was the Bad Place before, it was glaringly obvious now. 

 

As she goes to leave, mind already set on a destination, she hears Chidi call helplessly after her.

 

“Don’t go- I’m sorry, wait-”

 

“No, I’m sorry,” she says, not even bothering to sound reassuring. “I’m sorry, Chidi. Thanks for everything.”

 

Ten minutes later, she’s standing in front of the door to Michael’s office. She lifts her hand - hesitates for only a second - and knocks.

 

\------

 

#000. 

 

“I’m bored,” says Persephone blandly, draping herself like a harlot over Michael’s desk. 

 

“Go pull some poor bastard’s brain out through his nose and get back to me,” the Architect says absently, eyes still fixated on the paper below him. He’s sketching a rough layout, built over the default design of a real Good Place neighborhood. It’s a grueling process; everything has to be perfect.

 

“That’s not what I mean.” Persephone sits up and crosses one long, smooth leg over the other. “I mean I’m bored of all this.”

 

She gestures vaguely with one finely-manicured hand and Michael raises an eyebrow.

 

“You’re bored of casting punishment unto the damned - which, might I remind you, is exactly what you were created to do?”

 

The girl nods ruefully. “It’s always the same. There’s no novelty to it anymore. I mean, that’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it?” She drums her fingers over the blueprints next to her. 

 

“I suppose. But it’s more for the sake of progress than alleviating boredom...” 

 

He trails off, concentrating on the lines of his pencil rather than the woman on his desk. For once, surprisingly, she doesn’t bite back with an insult or quip; rather, she sits pensively for a few long moments. 

 

“What do you think it’s like, Michael?”

 

“Hm?” He doesn’t even look up. On any other day she’d get mad at him for ignoring her but today she seems oddly docile. 

 

“Being tortured. Being  _ human _ .”

 

“Painful, I’d presume. They spend most of their lives in misery and a majority of them end up in our hands anyway.”

 

“But you’d think they’d give up, wouldn’t you? And they don’t. I want to know why.”

 

“Pick a human’s brain then. Maybe literally.” Michael is only half listening at this point, more focused on his work than he is on Persephone, which is, frankly, how he treats their relationship most of the time anyway. He feels her hand on his shoulder and he looks up, jarred from his thoughts.

 

“I’ve had an idea. A crazy one.”

 

He stops himself short from saying “ _ isn’t that most of your ideas? _ ” and instead gestures for her to elaborate further. 

 

“Have you considered who you’re going to be putting in the neighborhood? Which humans?”

 

Michael sits back in his chair and legitimately thinks about it. “I… hadn’t. I guess… a group of maybe three or four? Around the same age, people who might have met in real life. But if they had met in real life, they’d hate each other immediately. Complete polar opposites, people who will push each other’s buttons.”

 

“Mhm. Go on.”

 

“Perhaps… someone well educated and someone incredibly stupid. Someone rich who sees everyone else as inferior? One with firm moral standards and one without, who puts themself before anyone else with no regard to moral righteousness.”

 

Persephone waits for a moment, watching the way Michael’s eyes light up when he talks about his project. Adorable, really.

 

“What if I was one of them?”

 

Michael’s gaze flicks incredulously over to her. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not a human.”

 

The girl’s mouth, red with lipstick, slides into a comfortable smirk.

 

“But I could pretend to be.”

 

\------

 

#556.

 

Chidi steps onto the train with Michael just behind him. He catches a glimpse of Eleanor waiting on the platform outside and his stomach twists uncomfortably. This isn’t easy for either of them, and he has a deep suspicion that Michael isn’t actually helping them at all. But what can he do? They’re already in literal, actual hell. Things couldn’t get much worse, could they? 

 

He immediately kicks himself for asking that because of course they could, they were in the Bad Place at the hands and mercy of a demon who was currently alone with him on a train. This was, in hindsight, a terrible idea.

 

“Here’s your test,” Michael says gently, and Chidi is reminded of how comforting the man’s guidance had once felt. “You’re going to stand, right here-” He points to a spot at the front of the car, close to the engine- “and face forward. This is important. When Eleanor gets on the train, she’s going to stand in the back. Neither of you can say anything or make any noise. If you do, the train stops and you’ll be brought back here.”

 

“That’s all?” Chidi looks confused, but he steps forward almost eagerly. Michael holds out a hand, stopping him in his tracks. 

 

“One more thing. You and Eleanor cannot speak, but you are not allowed to turn around and face her. If you turn around even once before you reach the Medium Place, the train will stop and return you to this neighborhood.”

 

Chidi swallows. He knows this test, and it isn’t going to be easy, especially since he doesn’t know if he can trust Michael at all.

 

“Think you can handle this, Chidi?”

 

Chidi nods grimly and steps forward. He doesn’t have a choice. 

 

When Michael returns to the platform, Eleanor is waiting silently, her arms crossed over her chest. She looks equal parts irritated and unsure, which confirms his theory about the only necessary human emotions being anger and confusion. 

 

“Let’s get this show on the road, ashhole.”

 

For a long moment, he just looks down at her, reading her expression and letting her try to read his. 

 

“Eleanor.” It’s so soft, it’s almost a whisper. “Are you sure you want to leave here?”

 

“This is hell,” she hisses. “Why wouldn’t I leave?”

 

“You forget,” Michael says calmly, “that this hell is built upon paradise. This place could be all yours, if you wanted it. I think we could make a deal.”

 

Eleanor’s posture shifts from a purely defensive stance into something a little more willing and Michael feels a thrum of satisfaction in his chest. Her arms drop to her sides. 

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Michael gestures to the neighborhood behind them. “I could give you this neighborhood. Your paradise, however you want it. Your wish is my command. No more torture, no more lies.”

 

Her eyes narrow in a familiar way. “Why are you offering me this? What do you get out of it?”

 

Michael smiles and Eleanor is reminded of a snake. “There’s only one catch. You get everything your greasy little heart desires-” 

 

He waves a hand toward the train. 

 

“-but Chidi has to leave.”

 

Eleanor’s lips part and her eyes widen. Michael watches the gears turn in her head, weighing the cost, considering the options. 

 

“Chidi might get into the real Good Place if he leaves,” she muses, and Michael chuckles at how eagerly she’s taken the bait. 

 

“Or perhaps he goes to the real Bad Place and he’s tortured for eternity.”

 

The human bites her lip. “Odds are he won’t, though. He’s a good nerd.” It sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than debate with him.

 

For a minute, Eleanor stands between the heaven she wants and the man she doesn’t deserve, between the hell she’s been living in and the rejection that would make any paradise the most painful torture. 

 

“I’ve made up my mind,” she tells Michael, and the Architect’s grin widens. 

 

“I know.”

 

\------

 

#000.

 

“Wipe your memory? Have you lost your mind?”

 

“No. And you’re not wiping me clean, you’re just… I don’t know. Brainwashing me?”

 

Persephone’s tone is casual, like she’s talking about the weather instead of asking him to make her believe she’s a human so he can literally torture her. (There’s a deep, sick part of him that’s honestly really excited at the prospect. She can be a real bitch, after all.) 

 

“You realize what you’re asking me to do, right? And how absolutely insane it is?”

 

Michael stands up, hands on his desk, and leans across towards her almost threateningly. Were she a real human, she’d be cowering - despite his admittedly amiable demeanor most of the time, Michael can be damn scary when he wants to be, and he knows it. Unfortunately, Persephone is nearly impossible to intimidate. She stands up to her human body’s full height of five-foot-four, plants her hands between his on the desk, and grins up at him like the Cheshire Cat.

 

“You’ll do it, though, won’t you? You’ll make me a human and get to torture me for a million years, and I’ll finally know what it’s like to be a human being. It’s going to be fun, Michael, trust me.”

 

“I’d have to make a few… modifications to your human form.” He eyes her body up and down, not with a desirous eye but an architectural one. Her eyes narrow.

 

“Make me ugly, Michael, and I’ll make sure you’re in for a world of hurt when this is over. I am not spending a million years as a human who isn’t even hot.”

 

“Of course,” he says, not even really minding the threat. He’s thinking a bit older, short, beautiful in a spunky sort of way, perhaps blonde. But he can’t call her Persephone, that won’t do. His mind reels with the possibilities of names, personalities, interests. He’s practically building a human from scratch, one perfectly tailored to his neighborhood.

 

A quiet thrill goes through him. This is going to be fun.

 

“You really think you can handle it?” Michael says quietly, glancing from her eyes to her lips and back again. “I’m not exactly a soft touch when it comes to torture.”

 

“Honey,” Persephone purrs, “that’s what I’m counting on.”

 

\------

 

#556.

 

Chidi stands at the front of the train, mind racing. There are hundreds of reasons not to trust Michael and very little compelling evidence that he would ever actually be on their side, and yet here he is, doing exactly what Michael’s instructed, hoping against hope that he and Eleanor will make it to the Medium Place. 

 

He’s so lost in thought that when the train jolts forward and begins to move, he’s so startled by it that he nearly falls over. He finds his balance and almost immediately starts panicking. He tries to glance out the window to see if anyone is standing on the platform, but the train is already picking up speed and he doesn’t dare turn his head. 

 

He hadn’t heard Eleanor board the train. He had no way of knowing if she was actually behind him. 

 

He knows what Michael was expecting: he’d lose his nerve and turn around to see if Eleanor was with him, dooming them both to an eternity in the neighborhood under the Architect’s mildly sadistic care. 

 

So the solution was easy, then. He wouldn’t turn around. 

 

As the train rolled further into the desert wastes, Chidi discovered his mind absolutely would not shut up. If he didn’t turn around, the train would continue, but then maybe Michael was lying about there being a Medium Place at all. 

 

Maybe the train would just keep going and going and going until it either drove Chidi mad or he broke down and turned around to face Eleanor - that is, if Eleanor was even on the train to begin with. 

 

That had to be it. This was just another form of torture: Eleanor wasn’t on the train at all, and Chidi was meant to be tortured by his doubts for a thousand years without ever being able to confirm or deny that Eleanor was with him. 

 

He feels his blood boil. He’d been right after all. This had to be another of Michael’s games, there’s no way he’d let them leave the neighborhood that easily. He takes a deep breath, feeling steady for once.

 

“I know this is a trick, Michael,” he says, and the train screeches to a halt.

 

“No!” cries a devastatingly familiar female voice, and his heart drops to his feet because  _ Eleanor was on the train the whole time. _ __   
  


He whirls around to see her, hands pressed over her mouth, wide-eyed and staring at him. Behind her, Michael stands with a hand on her shoulder, reptile grin spreading across his face, and then he  _ laughs _ . 

 

“You lose,” he says gleefully, shoulders shaking with a giggle. “You failed the test.”

 

He laughs as he half-pushes Eleanor aside and advances towards Chidi, laughs as the train begins to roll backwards, laughs as he lifts one hand up and snaps his fingers.

 

\------

 

#327.

 

She stands in front of Michael’s desk. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

 

He folds his hands in front of him and looks up at her through his glasses, seeming for all the world like a gentle, kinda-hot Colonel Sanders-type guy who wanted nothing more than to create a paradise for the good humans in the universe.

 

Too bad she could see right through it. 

 

He’s about to say something but she beats him to it, the words tumbling from her like a wave: “This is the Bad Place. I’ve known since day one.”

 

His expression goes from open and kind to one of thinly-veiled fury and coldness in only a few seconds, and it practically gives her whiplash.

 

“Again? Are you  _ kidding me _ ?”

 

Confusion sets in. What is he talking about? She’s about to ask, but he continues as if she isn’t even there.

 

“We were doing so  _ well  _ this time! I swear, next time you and Chidi aren’t allowed to know each others’  _ names, _ it’s always him-”

 

“I’m sorry, what?” She steps forward and cuts him off. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. This… this is the Bad Place, isn’t it? Am I going crazy? Are  _ you _ going crazy?”

 

He stops, and looks at her, and his expression softens. “Oh, Eleanor,” he says softly. “You are just so clever.” But then the fondness is gone, and his eyes are sharp as steel as he steps around his desk to stand in front of her and cup her cheek in his hand.

 

“So clever,” he repeats, “that you’re throwing a wrench into the gears, here. And you don’t even know it.”

 

“Wha-” She begins, but he cuts her off. 

 

“You’re terrible at being human,” he muses. “You realize that, don’t you, Persephone?”

 

The woman blinks.

 

Once, and then twice. Then, suddenly, her eyes widen, her breath hitches, and Persephone is back.

 

“I guessed it again, didn’t I?”

 

Michael smiles at her, at his Eleanor, his Persephone. “You did,” he says, almost ruefully. “We’re going to have to try again.”

 

She leans her head against his hand, still cradling her face. “I don’t mind,” she murmurs. “Being a human is so messy and sad and  _ fun _ .”

 

“Until next time, then,” Michael replies by way of farewell.

 

“Until next time,” she echoes, almost gravely, and he slides the hand on her cheek around to the back of her neck as he leans down to kiss her, his other hand raising to snap his fingers.

 

\------

 

#001.

 

A rush of air. The jolt of a heartbeat. Eleanor opens her eyes. 

 

Her body feels new, like she’s been asleep for a long time, and despite her reservations she feels nearly excited to be awake. 

 

A man who is not at all familiar to her opens the door of the waiting room.

 

“Eleanor.” He smiles warmly. “Come on in.”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: jesterquill
> 
> feedback (kudos/comments/love letters) is ALWAYS appreciated. 
> 
> thank you for reading.


End file.
